On the 23 – 24 May 2019, my two feet took me to Poland’s best Agile Software Development and Product Management conference in Kraków. The 10th annual ACE! conference. Given the anniversary, organisers prepared two adventurous days. Among many attractions such as open spaces, talks, workshops, dinner with a stranger, I really enjoyed the possibility to give feedback after the talks. What struck me the most was, how inclusive and diverse ACE! conference was. Clear focus on accessibility, with both sign language and live text, made it really unique and worthwhile.
I was among many attendees from all corners of the world, different genders, backgrounds and experiences. ACE! became a place where I enjoyed discussions about agile that made me rethink the way I look at it. Those discussions were not only triggered by other agile coaches, but also by UX designers, developers, managers, testers, HR representatives to name a few.
Takeaways
Here are my top three takeaways from the talks that I enjoyed the most. You can watch them, along with other talks on the organiser’s page:
aceconf.com/ace-past
Empathy at Work by Sharon Steed
Empathy shapes culture more than any other core value
Sharon embraced her own challenges to teach empathy, her talk was both educating and moving.
She encourages you to engage empathy by creating the right environment for it. Then defining it and discussing with your teams. That should result in a system that helps your teams to be more empathetic.
To learn more about how to engage empathy at your workplace, you can start by reading Sharon’s free report on empathy at work: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/empathy-at-work/9781492050483
Using Neuroscience to Build High Performance Teams by Elaine Sullivan
We are goal seeking machines
Elaine gave a great crash course on neuroscience, with a little bit of humour. Moreover, she nicely divided and based her adjusted model on SCARF. David Rock’s model on collaborating and influencing others. Great for learning more about your team and their behaviour.
You can dive in deeper into this topic by:
- reading the original research by David Rock: http://dcntp.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Readiness_for_change.pdf
- watching his TED talk: https://youtu.be/uDIyxxayNig
Accelerated Learning: How Can Agile Help You? by Artur Margonari
Practice, practice, practice!
Artur shared his amazing journey as he challenged himself into new learnings, great tips on how to be persistent. Really entertaining and fun.
Want to give it a go? Learn something new and master it in a short time? You can start by picking an area of interest, for you or your team and watch this TED talk by Josh Kaufman as a primer: https://youtu.be/5MgBikgcWnY
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